Cloud Computing

admin | Xtras | March, 08 2010 | No Comment

Cloud computing, the future for small business?

Last modified on 2010-08-11 14:25:43 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Cloud Computing is all the buz right now. It’s so much of a buzz word that people are overlooking the real potential these applications have. Cloud computing looks like it will be the next major leap in the computer time-line. The potential of cloud computing in the future is lower cost, easier deployment, and up gradability. These are all features an average computer user might not be able to accomplish on their own. For that reason alone, cloud computing instantly places the average user in an even playing field with larger companies who can right now afford high performance servers and a full time IT staff. Right now there is a need for small business to have a scalable solution for their company. Small companies need a solution that will give them solid computers and industry software to compete in the global market place.

A nice case study that started me off on this subject was here. I noticed parts of the article where small businesses were benefiting from cloud computing already. I think this is in a large part due to hosted software. When a company busy a workstation for an employee, they often rack up more debt buying all the software that employee would need to produce work for the company. Cloud Computing covers anything hosted online by some server in the sky. Email has been this way for years, and now we have services like Google Docs. There is even online file storage. In a way you are already trusting your files to the cloud. We are all prone to computer crashes and this has many of us looking to the cloud options out there for data backup.

The downside to cloud computing is security. I love that word security and everyone clings to it online. I spent 5 years running an online store and security always came up when you were thinking of entering a credit card. In reality, it is even more unsecure handing your credit card over to someone at a drive-thru window. Company’s have documents they don’t want others to read, and that’s probably why they have stayed away from cloud computing. Some new cloud computing OS’s now let you host the operating system on your own server. Now the security is in your hands. As this becomes even more popular, cloud computing will start gaining speed. Soon people will prefer to have a virtual web top with their files safely backed up on multiple servers vs trusting that 4 year old desktop in the office.

Where do I think this is headed? I have years of experience working with small business and I know what it means to have no budget. These small company’s are the ones who can benefit the most from Cloud Computing. Here is an example for where I’m coming from. The company has a salesman and he is on the road visiting multiple clients. The company usually has to fork out money for a laptop, and at the end of his trip he needs to sync up his contacts and new files to the older desktop he has running in his office. Right away cloud computing can fix so many things. With a cloud OS, he can just open up his web browser from any computer and have access to his virtual desktop with all the files he needs. If either computer crashes, no problems he simply goes to another computer that has a working web browser and logs in to view all his files “unharmed”. I know first hand that a computer crash to a small company with no IT personnel can cost the company in so many ways.

My example number two. A small company wants to higher a new employee. The employee will need a workstation and some basic word processing software. This usually means having to buy MS Office. Here is my cloud computing option. Buy the cheapest laptop you can find. All the laptop needs to do is access a web browser. The employee opens the web browser to the “web top” and there on the web top/desktop are all the productivity programs they would need to produce for the company. Even better yet, since they can login from any computer that has a web browser they will be able to access the web top from home. You might even get better productivity out of sick days utilizing this way of Cloud Computing.

There are a large number of Cloud Computing OS’s right now. Most are in a sort of Beta or Alpha stage. Icloud really is the more visually appealing of the Cloud OS’s. The downfall is that this really only works good if you are running Windows and IE 7 or 8. Most of us would prefer a solution that is more versatile. This is what drove me to eyeOS. Now its not as visual, but the framework is there and it functions very well.

icloud desktop

Icloud OS Beta, on mac Alpha

gOS desktop

g OS version 3.1

eye OS desktop

eyeOS in Beta

After taking a Digital Publishing class, I really wanted to find out what is next in terms of working online. Everything digital we have is published online by a computer somewhere. With this why can’t we use a virtural OS “Cloud Computing” to do what we are already doing online today? The answer is that we can. People are already using cloud computing and have been for years. For those of us who have a Gmail account, thats nothing more than cloud computing used to organize text files sent back and forth between our contacts.

Johnathan Zittrain points out that the web would be a better place as long as there is openness. This is exactly how some of these online operating systems came about. For example, eyeOS’s about page refers to all these different online mediums that have helped make the program what it is today. Behind the eyeos project there is many more people involved than those working at the eyeos company. It is almost impossible to create a list with everybody who has contributed to the eyeos project since every blog post, comment or suggestion has improved eyeos in different ways. Eyeos would not be anything without all of them. They offer up their OS for free, and anyone can contribute in their own way.

In the spirit of openness and for the fact that I have been wanting to try out a virtual OS, I went ahead and downloaded eyeOS. I decided I would try this out on my own server and let everyone reading this know my personal take on it.

Here is a nice YouTube video of the operating system at work. Got to love this guys British Accent. It really is a nice video on the OS and the features.

In the near future I will do a video of my own on it. I want to make a demo login on my site, so everyone can get a chance to test drive this OS eventually. Check back soon for my update.

Share some Links:

In The Clouds

Should you setup a webtop

Portable cloud computing

icloud puts an OS in the clouds

Ghost OS operating system

free open source software vs cloud computing

cloud computing for your backups

cloud computer text editor better than Word?

Case Studies

Plug into the Cloud

Should you move your small business to the cloud